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Also I came back from watching the movie and, to continue the tradition from TFA, wrote a post-movie ficlet about Rey's parentage. Because I do REALLY REALLY love that a theme of the movie was that Rey's talents don't come from her genetics, but from herself and her past and her choices. But I also don't really like the uncontested statement that because they were drunk scrap traders who couldn't keep their kid, her parents were nothing and worthless. :/ They were still Rey's parents! And they must have had some kind of good in them, sometime, if they made Rey! So I made this.
Also it's a Thor:Ragnarok crossover. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"I'm not telling her!" Poe said. "Why do I have to be the one to tell her?"
Chewie explained exactly why Poe deserved, for so many reasons, to be the one to tell the General what had happened.
Poe went to tell her.
General Organa was sitting in one of the Falcon's gunnery pods, staring into the blackness of space. It was one of the only places in the ship where it was still possible to have some time alone, and nobody was stupid enough to disturb here there.
Except, apparently, Poe.
"Captain Dameron," she said when he stepped in.
"Hello, um, General," he said, ducking his head to fit through.
She gestured at the dark starfield outside. "I can't help but notice," she said, "that we don't seem to be in hyperspace anymore."
Poe winced. "Yeah. About that. Did you know that this ship had a history of hyperdrive malfunctions? Because I did not, in fact, know that this ship had a history of hyperdrive malfunctions. What I am saying is, the hyperdrive seems to have malfunctioned."
"And they sent you to tell me?"
Poe shrugged.
"So where are we, now that the hyperdrive is no longer functioning?"
"That's an interesting question. Apparently," Poe said.
Chewie and a couple of the other surviving starship techs eventually managed to explain that they weren't sure; that the starfield didn't match anywhere in the Falcon's navicomp; and that there were some funny readings that implied that possibly they hadn't actually come out of hyperspace, just gone into some different kind of hyperspace. "Or maybe the Falcon's sensors and navicomp are malfunctiong," the tech added with a shrug.
BB-8 rolled up to the main screen interface and started changing the range on the sensors; Poe thought that maybe she was trying to fix whatever was wrong - but then he realized she was just focusing them closer to the Falcon. Specifically, on the large spaceship that was looming just below them.
"BB-8 says maybe we should ask them," Poe translated unnecessarily.
It wasn't anything near the size of a cruiser or destroyer or even a large yacht, but it was large enough to dwarf the Falcon, a battered-looking design built of cylinders on cylinders that reminded Poe vaguely of some of the Imperial-era Verpine designs, but alien even for that. They certainly weren't First Order or First Order-affliliated. It didn't seem to be responding to their sudden appearance.
"Hail them," the General ordered, and Chewie sent out a standard request. There was no answer.
"Maybe it's a derelict," someone suggested, just as the other ship opened an audio channel.
"--No, I know how, give it back!" the person on the other end of the channel said, and then cleared his throat. "Hail, stranger! This is the good ship Statesman out of Asgard, en route to Earth. What is your business here?"
"Asgard? Earth?" Finn mouthed at Poe, questioning, and Poe shook his head. Neither of those systems were familiar.
The General leaned down to speak into the audio pickup. "This is the Millennium Falcon, General Organa commanding, aligned with--" she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, "The Rebel Alliance."
They'd spoken, before, about how it was time to give up pretending that they were a Resistance, how to stoke the spark back into fire they needed to claim that old name, those old victories, but Poe knew it hurt her, to admit the old Rebellion's work had never finished.
"Oh, really?" the person on the other ship said brightly. "We're with the Rebels too! That's awesome, how did you find us, I should have known you were out of Sakaar, in that hunk of--"
There was a scrabbling noise, and then someone else spoke over the mike. "No. There is no way in hell you're actually the Millennium Falcon. Who are you really, and what are you trying to pull?"
Chewie muttered something about how it was nice to be famous.
Leia raised her eyebrows and said, "I assure you, we intend no deception; we're not even sure where we are, as we've had a minor hyperdrive malfunction."
"A minor hyperdrive malfunction," the person repeated, and then said, "Okay. So maybe you are the Falcon. Positing that's true, what do you want?"
"We could use some navigational help, if you could point us back to where we're going," she said. "And, if possible, hangar space for field repairs to the hyperdrive."
"That's it? No 'mercy mission' - Okay, okay, Korg, stop it, let me talk to - I mean, I'll relay the message to our leadership and we'll see what we can do."
"Do you really think we should take the risk with a strange ship?" Kaydel asked once they'd signed off. "What if they're First Order?"
Finn raised his hand. "I'm 99% sure they're not First Order," he said.
"We are not in a place to be turning aside from any chance of finding an alliance," the General said, and that was that.
There was a small welcoming committee when the ship-that-could-not-possibly-be-the-actual-Falcon landed in the Statesman: Thor, as the closest they had to a ship's captain; and Korg, because he was still very excited at meeting other rebels even after Bruce had explained that despite flying a ship that definitely belonged in a junkyard, they were probably not from Sakaar; and Meik, because Korg was there; and Heimdall, because when Heimdall said he needed to be someplace, everybody believed him; and Bruce, because when Bruce said he needed to be someplace, nobody was wiling to tell him no. And Valkyrie, because she said she was bored.
Bruce had kind of expected that joining up with the remnant of one of the greatest martial civilizations on his side of the multiverse would have resulted in slightly more discipline, and organization, and so on, but he wasn't complaining.
Also, it really did look a lot like the Millennium Falcon.
"That's definitely a Corellian YT-1300 freighter," Korg stage-whispered to him as it landed. "I didn't think there were any of them still flying!"
"You know Corellian freighters?" Bruce asked him, suprised.
"The Grandmaster had one for awhile," Korg said. "Dunno why, it was a pile of scrap even by Sakaar's standards. Dunno what happened to it either, he probably junked it. There was a huge bounty for anyone who found another one awhile after that, but it never got claimed, far as I know."
The entrance ramp to the ship slowly lowered, and four people stepped out. The one in front, admittedly, looked an awful lot like Carrie Fisher circa the Wishful Drinking tour, if she'd dropped a few dozen pounds very quickly. And the one behind her looked an awful lot like a Wookiee.
Thor stepped forward to greet her. She clasped his hand. "King Thor. We are deeply grateful that you have offered us your assistance in our time of great need."
"No, no!" he said. "It is we who are honored. I can see, already, that you are a most gallant band of warriors, and we welcome you with all of what little hospitality we may still offer, poor though is it. This is Heimdall, one of my greatest advisors," he said, and gestured him forward.
"It's an honor to meet you as well," the General said.
Heimdall nodded at her respectfully, but then narrowed his eyes, stepped forward, and looked her over somewhat more carefully, arms crossed. Finally he said, "Prince Loki. Come out, and explain yourself."
Loki faded into visibility - still carefully at the far side of the group from Bruce, he noted with satisfaction. "What?" Loki said. "I haven't done anything!"
Heimdall raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the General. She was following the byplay with the serene air of someone who has gracefully endured far more awkward situations and wants everyone present to know that. "Explain this, then," he said.
Loki stepped up to the General and offered her a handshake. "I'm Loki, Thor's brother. I apologize for Heimdall; I'm not sure what's gotten into him. He hasn't been quite the same since our planet blew up."
Bruce winced in sympathy just on the off-chance it was really Leia Organa. He noticed the Hispanic-looking man at the General's right side wince at exactly the same moment. But she just smiled and took his hand. "I understand, it must be a difficult time for all of you."
As their hands touched, Loki frowned, and then said, "Okay, I kind of see your point, old man, but I have never seen her before in my life, I have no idea who she is." He leaned forward and sniffed her, then leaned back again and said, "You've never been to a planet called Tatooine, have you, General?"
"As a matter of fact, I've never been closer to there than orbit," she said.
"No idea, then, sorry, Heimdall," Loki said cheerfully and stepped away.
"Tatooine?" Thor said. "As in the great Saga of the People of the Valleys of Tatooine?"
"Wait, wait, wait," Bruce said. He'd been trying to be good - he'd planned to stand there and watch and not say anything - but there was only so far he could resist. "Are you telling me that all that nonsense you told the Avengers about the Tatooine saga was true? I thought you were pranking Tony! In revenge for that Monty Python thing!"
"Of course it was true!" Thor said. "All of your great sagas are built upon truths!" He paused. "From a certain point of view."
Bruce winced again.
"But come!" Thor added. "This is no place for ancient history. There is a feast waiting in the great hall below. Bring your people - there shall be meat, and ale, and song, and the telling of tales of tragedy and of great heroes."
General Organa's small band was barely a few dozen, even counting the robots, and seeing them mixed in with the remnants of Asgard in the cargo bay they'd immediately repurposed as a feasting hall pointed up just how good a job the Asgardians had done in successfully evacuating nearly all of the civilians in the city. Most of her people were seated at the high table with the king and his most honored advisors, who included, for some reason, the Hulk, and after the Hulk had abruptly said he was tired and left a few days ago, Bruce.
The tall golden robot - C-3P0, Bruce had stopped trying to deny even in his own head - had tried to make a fuss about being seated at the table with the others, but Korg had put his foot down and declared that on this ship, no intelligent being would ever be treated as a slave, at which point he'd said "Oh! Very well," very suddenly and sat down.
The orange soccer-ball robot, by contrast, had hopped up on a chair, extruded several mechanical appendages, and started cutting a slab of roast into increasingly small pieces and burning them into charcoal while beeping cheerfully to itself. It was somewhat disconcerting. Bruce stopped watching.
"So, may I ask why the question about Tatooine?" the General asked Loki across the table, during a break in the conversation. "Or is it something that's impolite to speak of in more detail?"
"Oh, it's incredibly impolite," Loki said. "But this is an Asgardian feast, so impolite is always appropriate. Heimdall seems to think you're one of my children, because he's under the impression that I scatter my children carelessly around the worlds. Actually I don't, and it's entirely projection on his part, but the thing is, you do smell a bit like one of mine. The only possibility I can think of anywhere near your universe is when I was much younger, and Odin the King used to take me on road trips with him - do you remember that, Brother?" he asked Thor.
"Oh yes," Thor said. "I was boilingly jealous. Father never took me along to anything but battles and treaty negotiations."
Loki stared at him for a moment, and then shook his head. "At any rate, on this particular planet there was a slavegirl. She was beautiful and angry and pure of heart and skilled in mischief, as slaves will learn to be, and I would have taken her back to Asgard for a concubine except that Odin told me that I was not to be bringing home strays." He paused. "Which, in retrospect, was staggeringly hypocritical even for him. But instead, he wiped her memory of our visit and forced us to move on. I did go back and check on her - oh, ten years later, perhaps - when I'd gained my own freedom of movement. But she seemed none the worse for Odin's meddling, and there was most definitely no child. So I deem it unlikely."
"I have never so much as seen the planet from orbit," the General said slowly, "but my twin brother was raised there, and I understand it was our father's birthplace."
"A granddaughter?" Loki looked at her even more closely for a moment, and then shook his head. "Still, it seems unlikely. As I said, there was no child: For all my mischief, I am not one to leave my children alone in the dark. Also, I cannot expect that my seed would produce one so fair and wise and full of grace as yourself: that has never been my legacy."
"Oh, I don't know, Prince," the Valkyrie said, reaching past him for another wine bottle. "It takes a fair amount of grace to pull off those dramatic scenes you love so much. Wisdom," she wiggled and hand back and forth. "That's somewhat more questionable."
The General's face twitched, and then she started, brokenly, laughing. They'd told enough of the fall of Asgard, over the first few courses of the meal, that she probably had a fairly good idea of the sort of drama the Asgardian princes could pull off when you gave them half a chance. Her other people at the high table all turned at the sound, as if it was something they hadn't heard very often. "Threepio," she said to the droid, "Tell them about Luke's last stand."
"Luke?" Loki asked.
"My brother," she said. "I'm told it was an old family name, but it wasn't from our mother's family, and I've never heard of it from Tatooine."
They'd heard the basics of the General's situation before they were invited onboard: that they'd recently fought, and lost, a great battle with an army led by an evil sorcerer, and this was the last remnant of the survivors of their band. Now Threepio gave them the details of that last stand, and of Luke Skywalker, who had hidden himself away out of guilt that he had allowed his nephew to turn to the Dark. And then had reappeared, at the hour when all hope was lost, and put himself between the enemy's war machines and those he loved.
Threepio, despite all appearance, was a very good storyteller, and everyone at the table became drawn into the story as he told it, even though Bruce felt somewhat disconcertingly like an Ewok at first. He'd never been that much into those stories, but even he knew the name Luke Skywalker, and knew that this was nothing that was in the stories told on Earth.
"But General Organa tells me Master Luke was never truly there," Threepio finished, "and Ben fought merely a projection of his spirit in the Force, so that when he, at last, ran Master Luke through - as he must have done, at last - he would have found himself fighting nothing but air."
There was a moment of silence, and then Loki said, "Okay. Maybe I can see it now. If I did leave a child on Tatooine, somehow."
"It seems they share your talents," Thor agreed.
"Sorcery does run in the blood," Loki said.
"Indeed. And trickery, treachery, moodiness and bad temper - but it's that flair for always choosing the dramatic option which is most unmistakable."
"You're one to talk!" Loki protested.
"Oh, I do not deny it," Thor said. "But we two are brothers, after all."
"Well, in that case, Grandfather and Uncle," the General said, "I don't imagine you'd be willing to come back with us, and help us deal with Ben and his Master Snoke?"
"Ben is yours?" Loki asked, very gently.
"Yes," the General said, and the pain in that one word might have cracked open a planet: "Always."
"Oh, wait," said a girl at the other end of the table. She hadn't spoken much, applying herself with great dedication to her food. "I think I forgot to mention. Sorry. We were all so busy. Snoke's dead. Ben and I killed him. And all the Knights of Ren. Ben's Supreme Leader now."
Everybody stared at her then.
"I'm sorry," she added to the General. "I thought I could convince him to come back with me, to turn aside from his dark path, but he wanted me to stay and learn the ways of the Force and rule the galaxy beside him instead. And we broke your father's old lightsaber."
"Okay," Loki said. "Now I'm pretty sure they're mine."
"Is she yours too?" Thor asked, gesturing at the girl.
Loki frowned. "No. I don't think so. I don't get the right feeling from her."
The Valkyrie was staring at her with a very strange expression, and then said "Oh," and raised her hand. "No, I think that one's mine."
The girl shook her head. "No. I don't have any kind of heroic destiny or great lineage like the Skywalkers did. My parents were nobody: broken-down scrap traders who sold me for drinking money and then died on Jakku."
The Valkyrie raised her hand again. "Still me. Child, do you think there's that much of a line between a great hero of destiny and a drunkard of a scrap trader? Whoever told you that was kind enough not to mention the slave dealing, at least. Although it's hard to kill a Valkyrie, so I crawled away once I sobered up enough to steal a ship. And the man I was with wasn't your dad."
Loki frowned. "Who was her dad, then?"
The Valkyrie shrugged. "Never tried to find out," she said, and then pointed at Loki. "Look, you were on Sakaar for awhile, what would you have done if you'd blacked out at one of the Grandmaster's parties and then found yourself on a ship you didn't recognize, in a universe you'd never visited before, and then realized at some point between when you went to the party and you'd woken up, you'd fallen pregnant?"
"I made very, very sure I wasn't going to get pregnant at any of the Grandmaster's parties," Loki said.
"Well, you were clearly never as drunk as I was," she said. "So, yeah, even if I'd figured it out it wouldn't've done anyone any good. And I though I could stay sober long enough to raise a kid, at least. I was wrong," she added, "and should have known better. It lasted five years, maybe, before I was going downhill too fast to stop again and too far to have a kid, and stuck it out a couple years after that, longer than I should. When I realized how bad I had gotten, I left the kid with somebody who could probably at least feed her in exchange for getting drunk enough to forget why I cared, and then jiggered with all the ships in the junkyard until I found one where I could modify the hyperdrive enough to get me back to Sakaar. Sorry," she added to Leia, "If your ship came from Jakku, it's probably my fault you ended up here. I can take a look at it. And sorry to you, too, Rey, but you truly were better off after I left you."
"I grew up alone," she said, anger trembling in her voice, "Living in a burnt-out AT-ST, having to fight for every scrap of food and inch of safety."
The Valkyrie spread her hands. "Like I said," she said. "Better off. We can agree to disagree but at least you've never had to learn, yet, that there are worse things than alone. I'll go back with you and fight for you if you want," she added, and raised the bottle she'd been drinking from in a salute, "But I'm still not very good at being sober, so I can't promise I'll be much help."
"So!" Loki said, breaking the tension over the table. "Good news and bad news, kid. The good news is, we're not related. The bad news is, I'm pretty sure I had sex with your dad at least once."
Also it's a Thor:Ragnarok crossover. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"I'm not telling her!" Poe said. "Why do I have to be the one to tell her?"
Chewie explained exactly why Poe deserved, for so many reasons, to be the one to tell the General what had happened.
Poe went to tell her.
General Organa was sitting in one of the Falcon's gunnery pods, staring into the blackness of space. It was one of the only places in the ship where it was still possible to have some time alone, and nobody was stupid enough to disturb here there.
Except, apparently, Poe.
"Captain Dameron," she said when he stepped in.
"Hello, um, General," he said, ducking his head to fit through.
She gestured at the dark starfield outside. "I can't help but notice," she said, "that we don't seem to be in hyperspace anymore."
Poe winced. "Yeah. About that. Did you know that this ship had a history of hyperdrive malfunctions? Because I did not, in fact, know that this ship had a history of hyperdrive malfunctions. What I am saying is, the hyperdrive seems to have malfunctioned."
"And they sent you to tell me?"
Poe shrugged.
"So where are we, now that the hyperdrive is no longer functioning?"
"That's an interesting question. Apparently," Poe said.
Chewie and a couple of the other surviving starship techs eventually managed to explain that they weren't sure; that the starfield didn't match anywhere in the Falcon's navicomp; and that there were some funny readings that implied that possibly they hadn't actually come out of hyperspace, just gone into some different kind of hyperspace. "Or maybe the Falcon's sensors and navicomp are malfunctiong," the tech added with a shrug.
BB-8 rolled up to the main screen interface and started changing the range on the sensors; Poe thought that maybe she was trying to fix whatever was wrong - but then he realized she was just focusing them closer to the Falcon. Specifically, on the large spaceship that was looming just below them.
"BB-8 says maybe we should ask them," Poe translated unnecessarily.
It wasn't anything near the size of a cruiser or destroyer or even a large yacht, but it was large enough to dwarf the Falcon, a battered-looking design built of cylinders on cylinders that reminded Poe vaguely of some of the Imperial-era Verpine designs, but alien even for that. They certainly weren't First Order or First Order-affliliated. It didn't seem to be responding to their sudden appearance.
"Hail them," the General ordered, and Chewie sent out a standard request. There was no answer.
"Maybe it's a derelict," someone suggested, just as the other ship opened an audio channel.
"--No, I know how, give it back!" the person on the other end of the channel said, and then cleared his throat. "Hail, stranger! This is the good ship Statesman out of Asgard, en route to Earth. What is your business here?"
"Asgard? Earth?" Finn mouthed at Poe, questioning, and Poe shook his head. Neither of those systems were familiar.
The General leaned down to speak into the audio pickup. "This is the Millennium Falcon, General Organa commanding, aligned with--" she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, "The Rebel Alliance."
They'd spoken, before, about how it was time to give up pretending that they were a Resistance, how to stoke the spark back into fire they needed to claim that old name, those old victories, but Poe knew it hurt her, to admit the old Rebellion's work had never finished.
"Oh, really?" the person on the other ship said brightly. "We're with the Rebels too! That's awesome, how did you find us, I should have known you were out of Sakaar, in that hunk of--"
There was a scrabbling noise, and then someone else spoke over the mike. "No. There is no way in hell you're actually the Millennium Falcon. Who are you really, and what are you trying to pull?"
Chewie muttered something about how it was nice to be famous.
Leia raised her eyebrows and said, "I assure you, we intend no deception; we're not even sure where we are, as we've had a minor hyperdrive malfunction."
"A minor hyperdrive malfunction," the person repeated, and then said, "Okay. So maybe you are the Falcon. Positing that's true, what do you want?"
"We could use some navigational help, if you could point us back to where we're going," she said. "And, if possible, hangar space for field repairs to the hyperdrive."
"That's it? No 'mercy mission' - Okay, okay, Korg, stop it, let me talk to - I mean, I'll relay the message to our leadership and we'll see what we can do."
"Do you really think we should take the risk with a strange ship?" Kaydel asked once they'd signed off. "What if they're First Order?"
Finn raised his hand. "I'm 99% sure they're not First Order," he said.
"We are not in a place to be turning aside from any chance of finding an alliance," the General said, and that was that.
There was a small welcoming committee when the ship-that-could-not-possibly-be-the-actual-Falcon landed in the Statesman: Thor, as the closest they had to a ship's captain; and Korg, because he was still very excited at meeting other rebels even after Bruce had explained that despite flying a ship that definitely belonged in a junkyard, they were probably not from Sakaar; and Meik, because Korg was there; and Heimdall, because when Heimdall said he needed to be someplace, everybody believed him; and Bruce, because when Bruce said he needed to be someplace, nobody was wiling to tell him no. And Valkyrie, because she said she was bored.
Bruce had kind of expected that joining up with the remnant of one of the greatest martial civilizations on his side of the multiverse would have resulted in slightly more discipline, and organization, and so on, but he wasn't complaining.
Also, it really did look a lot like the Millennium Falcon.
"That's definitely a Corellian YT-1300 freighter," Korg stage-whispered to him as it landed. "I didn't think there were any of them still flying!"
"You know Corellian freighters?" Bruce asked him, suprised.
"The Grandmaster had one for awhile," Korg said. "Dunno why, it was a pile of scrap even by Sakaar's standards. Dunno what happened to it either, he probably junked it. There was a huge bounty for anyone who found another one awhile after that, but it never got claimed, far as I know."
The entrance ramp to the ship slowly lowered, and four people stepped out. The one in front, admittedly, looked an awful lot like Carrie Fisher circa the Wishful Drinking tour, if she'd dropped a few dozen pounds very quickly. And the one behind her looked an awful lot like a Wookiee.
Thor stepped forward to greet her. She clasped his hand. "King Thor. We are deeply grateful that you have offered us your assistance in our time of great need."
"No, no!" he said. "It is we who are honored. I can see, already, that you are a most gallant band of warriors, and we welcome you with all of what little hospitality we may still offer, poor though is it. This is Heimdall, one of my greatest advisors," he said, and gestured him forward.
"It's an honor to meet you as well," the General said.
Heimdall nodded at her respectfully, but then narrowed his eyes, stepped forward, and looked her over somewhat more carefully, arms crossed. Finally he said, "Prince Loki. Come out, and explain yourself."
Loki faded into visibility - still carefully at the far side of the group from Bruce, he noted with satisfaction. "What?" Loki said. "I haven't done anything!"
Heimdall raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the General. She was following the byplay with the serene air of someone who has gracefully endured far more awkward situations and wants everyone present to know that. "Explain this, then," he said.
Loki stepped up to the General and offered her a handshake. "I'm Loki, Thor's brother. I apologize for Heimdall; I'm not sure what's gotten into him. He hasn't been quite the same since our planet blew up."
Bruce winced in sympathy just on the off-chance it was really Leia Organa. He noticed the Hispanic-looking man at the General's right side wince at exactly the same moment. But she just smiled and took his hand. "I understand, it must be a difficult time for all of you."
As their hands touched, Loki frowned, and then said, "Okay, I kind of see your point, old man, but I have never seen her before in my life, I have no idea who she is." He leaned forward and sniffed her, then leaned back again and said, "You've never been to a planet called Tatooine, have you, General?"
"As a matter of fact, I've never been closer to there than orbit," she said.
"No idea, then, sorry, Heimdall," Loki said cheerfully and stepped away.
"Tatooine?" Thor said. "As in the great Saga of the People of the Valleys of Tatooine?"
"Wait, wait, wait," Bruce said. He'd been trying to be good - he'd planned to stand there and watch and not say anything - but there was only so far he could resist. "Are you telling me that all that nonsense you told the Avengers about the Tatooine saga was true? I thought you were pranking Tony! In revenge for that Monty Python thing!"
"Of course it was true!" Thor said. "All of your great sagas are built upon truths!" He paused. "From a certain point of view."
Bruce winced again.
"But come!" Thor added. "This is no place for ancient history. There is a feast waiting in the great hall below. Bring your people - there shall be meat, and ale, and song, and the telling of tales of tragedy and of great heroes."
General Organa's small band was barely a few dozen, even counting the robots, and seeing them mixed in with the remnants of Asgard in the cargo bay they'd immediately repurposed as a feasting hall pointed up just how good a job the Asgardians had done in successfully evacuating nearly all of the civilians in the city. Most of her people were seated at the high table with the king and his most honored advisors, who included, for some reason, the Hulk, and after the Hulk had abruptly said he was tired and left a few days ago, Bruce.
The tall golden robot - C-3P0, Bruce had stopped trying to deny even in his own head - had tried to make a fuss about being seated at the table with the others, but Korg had put his foot down and declared that on this ship, no intelligent being would ever be treated as a slave, at which point he'd said "Oh! Very well," very suddenly and sat down.
The orange soccer-ball robot, by contrast, had hopped up on a chair, extruded several mechanical appendages, and started cutting a slab of roast into increasingly small pieces and burning them into charcoal while beeping cheerfully to itself. It was somewhat disconcerting. Bruce stopped watching.
"So, may I ask why the question about Tatooine?" the General asked Loki across the table, during a break in the conversation. "Or is it something that's impolite to speak of in more detail?"
"Oh, it's incredibly impolite," Loki said. "But this is an Asgardian feast, so impolite is always appropriate. Heimdall seems to think you're one of my children, because he's under the impression that I scatter my children carelessly around the worlds. Actually I don't, and it's entirely projection on his part, but the thing is, you do smell a bit like one of mine. The only possibility I can think of anywhere near your universe is when I was much younger, and Odin the King used to take me on road trips with him - do you remember that, Brother?" he asked Thor.
"Oh yes," Thor said. "I was boilingly jealous. Father never took me along to anything but battles and treaty negotiations."
Loki stared at him for a moment, and then shook his head. "At any rate, on this particular planet there was a slavegirl. She was beautiful and angry and pure of heart and skilled in mischief, as slaves will learn to be, and I would have taken her back to Asgard for a concubine except that Odin told me that I was not to be bringing home strays." He paused. "Which, in retrospect, was staggeringly hypocritical even for him. But instead, he wiped her memory of our visit and forced us to move on. I did go back and check on her - oh, ten years later, perhaps - when I'd gained my own freedom of movement. But she seemed none the worse for Odin's meddling, and there was most definitely no child. So I deem it unlikely."
"I have never so much as seen the planet from orbit," the General said slowly, "but my twin brother was raised there, and I understand it was our father's birthplace."
"A granddaughter?" Loki looked at her even more closely for a moment, and then shook his head. "Still, it seems unlikely. As I said, there was no child: For all my mischief, I am not one to leave my children alone in the dark. Also, I cannot expect that my seed would produce one so fair and wise and full of grace as yourself: that has never been my legacy."
"Oh, I don't know, Prince," the Valkyrie said, reaching past him for another wine bottle. "It takes a fair amount of grace to pull off those dramatic scenes you love so much. Wisdom," she wiggled and hand back and forth. "That's somewhat more questionable."
The General's face twitched, and then she started, brokenly, laughing. They'd told enough of the fall of Asgard, over the first few courses of the meal, that she probably had a fairly good idea of the sort of drama the Asgardian princes could pull off when you gave them half a chance. Her other people at the high table all turned at the sound, as if it was something they hadn't heard very often. "Threepio," she said to the droid, "Tell them about Luke's last stand."
"Luke?" Loki asked.
"My brother," she said. "I'm told it was an old family name, but it wasn't from our mother's family, and I've never heard of it from Tatooine."
They'd heard the basics of the General's situation before they were invited onboard: that they'd recently fought, and lost, a great battle with an army led by an evil sorcerer, and this was the last remnant of the survivors of their band. Now Threepio gave them the details of that last stand, and of Luke Skywalker, who had hidden himself away out of guilt that he had allowed his nephew to turn to the Dark. And then had reappeared, at the hour when all hope was lost, and put himself between the enemy's war machines and those he loved.
Threepio, despite all appearance, was a very good storyteller, and everyone at the table became drawn into the story as he told it, even though Bruce felt somewhat disconcertingly like an Ewok at first. He'd never been that much into those stories, but even he knew the name Luke Skywalker, and knew that this was nothing that was in the stories told on Earth.
"But General Organa tells me Master Luke was never truly there," Threepio finished, "and Ben fought merely a projection of his spirit in the Force, so that when he, at last, ran Master Luke through - as he must have done, at last - he would have found himself fighting nothing but air."
There was a moment of silence, and then Loki said, "Okay. Maybe I can see it now. If I did leave a child on Tatooine, somehow."
"It seems they share your talents," Thor agreed.
"Sorcery does run in the blood," Loki said.
"Indeed. And trickery, treachery, moodiness and bad temper - but it's that flair for always choosing the dramatic option which is most unmistakable."
"You're one to talk!" Loki protested.
"Oh, I do not deny it," Thor said. "But we two are brothers, after all."
"Well, in that case, Grandfather and Uncle," the General said, "I don't imagine you'd be willing to come back with us, and help us deal with Ben and his Master Snoke?"
"Ben is yours?" Loki asked, very gently.
"Yes," the General said, and the pain in that one word might have cracked open a planet: "Always."
"Oh, wait," said a girl at the other end of the table. She hadn't spoken much, applying herself with great dedication to her food. "I think I forgot to mention. Sorry. We were all so busy. Snoke's dead. Ben and I killed him. And all the Knights of Ren. Ben's Supreme Leader now."
Everybody stared at her then.
"I'm sorry," she added to the General. "I thought I could convince him to come back with me, to turn aside from his dark path, but he wanted me to stay and learn the ways of the Force and rule the galaxy beside him instead. And we broke your father's old lightsaber."
"Okay," Loki said. "Now I'm pretty sure they're mine."
"Is she yours too?" Thor asked, gesturing at the girl.
Loki frowned. "No. I don't think so. I don't get the right feeling from her."
The Valkyrie was staring at her with a very strange expression, and then said "Oh," and raised her hand. "No, I think that one's mine."
The girl shook her head. "No. I don't have any kind of heroic destiny or great lineage like the Skywalkers did. My parents were nobody: broken-down scrap traders who sold me for drinking money and then died on Jakku."
The Valkyrie raised her hand again. "Still me. Child, do you think there's that much of a line between a great hero of destiny and a drunkard of a scrap trader? Whoever told you that was kind enough not to mention the slave dealing, at least. Although it's hard to kill a Valkyrie, so I crawled away once I sobered up enough to steal a ship. And the man I was with wasn't your dad."
Loki frowned. "Who was her dad, then?"
The Valkyrie shrugged. "Never tried to find out," she said, and then pointed at Loki. "Look, you were on Sakaar for awhile, what would you have done if you'd blacked out at one of the Grandmaster's parties and then found yourself on a ship you didn't recognize, in a universe you'd never visited before, and then realized at some point between when you went to the party and you'd woken up, you'd fallen pregnant?"
"I made very, very sure I wasn't going to get pregnant at any of the Grandmaster's parties," Loki said.
"Well, you were clearly never as drunk as I was," she said. "So, yeah, even if I'd figured it out it wouldn't've done anyone any good. And I though I could stay sober long enough to raise a kid, at least. I was wrong," she added, "and should have known better. It lasted five years, maybe, before I was going downhill too fast to stop again and too far to have a kid, and stuck it out a couple years after that, longer than I should. When I realized how bad I had gotten, I left the kid with somebody who could probably at least feed her in exchange for getting drunk enough to forget why I cared, and then jiggered with all the ships in the junkyard until I found one where I could modify the hyperdrive enough to get me back to Sakaar. Sorry," she added to Leia, "If your ship came from Jakku, it's probably my fault you ended up here. I can take a look at it. And sorry to you, too, Rey, but you truly were better off after I left you."
"I grew up alone," she said, anger trembling in her voice, "Living in a burnt-out AT-ST, having to fight for every scrap of food and inch of safety."
The Valkyrie spread her hands. "Like I said," she said. "Better off. We can agree to disagree but at least you've never had to learn, yet, that there are worse things than alone. I'll go back with you and fight for you if you want," she added, and raised the bottle she'd been drinking from in a salute, "But I'm still not very good at being sober, so I can't promise I'll be much help."
"So!" Loki said, breaking the tension over the table. "Good news and bad news, kid. The good news is, we're not related. The bad news is, I'm pretty sure I had sex with your dad at least once."
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CAN INFINITY WAR PLEASE JUST BE THIS
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"Well, you were clearly never as drunk as I was," she said.
LOLOLOL.
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and I really really want to hear The Saga of the People of the Valleys of Tatooine
Also, Korg is as delightfully dippy as he was in the movie.
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